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Steps

Step 1: Blanching the Chicken Legs

Method

Step 1: Blanching the Chicken Legs

To blanch the chicken legs, place them into a tall, skinny soup pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water up to a boil over medium-high heat.

Skim the impurities off the top as they rise to the surface. Once the water comes to a boil, drain and discard the murky water. Cover the chicken legs with cold water and return to the heat. Slowly bring to a simmer, skimming any additional impurities off the surface.

Step 2: Preparing Your Mise en Place

Method

Step 2: Preparing Your Mise en Place

To prepare the mirepoix, peel and cut the onions into large dice. Cut the celery and carrots into about 1/2" -inch pieces. Peel the garlic. Gather the bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, bay leaves and peppercorns).

Step 3: Starting the Broth

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salt (1/2 tsp per L/qt of liquid)

Method

Step 3: Starting the Broth

Once the impurities have been skimmed from the surface of the broth, add the salt, mirepoix and bouquet garni. Continue to gently simmer for about 45 minutes to one hour, or until the chicken has just cooked through.

Step 4: Removing the Meat

Method

Step 4: Removing the Meat

Once the meat has just cooked through, remove the legs from the broth. Set aside to cool.

Once the legs are cool enough to handle, remove the nice chunks of meat from the bones and set aside. The meat can be used in other preparations or it can be added back to the broth later, if making chicken soup.*

Step 5: Finishing the Broth

Method

Step 5: Finishing the Broth

Once all of the meat has been removed from the bones, return the bones to the broth. Continue to simmer the broth for 1 hour to extract the flavor from the bones.

Once the broth has finished cooking, remove and discard the solids. Strain the broth through a fine mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth.

Skim as much fat from the surface as possible. If desired, cool the broth over an ice bath and refrigerate. Remove any hardened fat before proceeding with your recipe.

This delicious, rich chicken broth can be used to make a variety of soups and it can also be used as a highly-flavorful stock.

Chef's Notes

3 Comments

Jameel M

•
February 18, 2013 at 03:58PM

I just attempted to make chicken broth for the first time. I'm thinking I agitated or allowed too close to a boil when I was making it (I'm not sure, but that's my suspicion).
I strained the broth through cheesecloth after removing the solids and refrigerated it. When I pulled it out of the refrigerator several hours later, it all seemed to jiggle (I was intending to skim the fat off similar to when finishing a pot roast).
Is this jiggling because the fat was intermingled instead of sitting on the surface? Is it the collagen — benefit of the homemade broth? Is it something else?

Hi Jameel- That is gelatin in action...formed from the slow, moist extraction from collagen and the connective tissue in the chicken. If it's clear, then it's free from too much particulate matter (coagulated blood and other impurities). The fat should have settled at the top where it would get pretty solid and easy to remove.
Did you de-fat it at all? Sounds like you have some good homemade broth or stock. Enjoy!

I don't think I saw much fat. I did skim when I was making the broth, so I think I just had gelatin for the most part. Somehow I'm under the impression that it could have been clearer, but I need to go watch the broth intro video again to be sure.
One thing that threw me off is the amount of broth I came up with. I had 7 chicken drumsticks in a pretty wide pot (an 8qt stock pot that's not as narrow as the stainless steel one I was eyeing recently — it's wider than the burner grate it sits on). It looked like a lot until I removed the solids and began to strain. For some reason it seemed to almost come up to half of what it appeared to be. I'd guess it came up to just over a quart of broth.
All of this said, I can definitely tell the differences between this and boxed broth. Guess I just have to get to work on making more!